Big Data and Analytics: IDC Report

IDC Financial Insights released a report recently, “Best Practices: IDC Maturity Model Benchmark – Big Data and Analytics”, which aims to help financial institutions monitor their level of maturity in big data and analytics (BDA) against market and industry benchmarks. The report was created for institutions to use the IDC benchmarks to define short- and long-term goals and plan for improvement; prioritize BDA technology, staffing and other related investment decisions; and uncover “maturity gaps.”

“In-market adoption of big data and analytics has reached the point where the capabilities and applications these technologies enable are becoming main stream for a growing number of financial services firms,” said Michael Versace, research director, IDC Financial Insights. “Yet many do not yet have a set of completely mature BDA competencies across the five critical dimensions that are necessary to effectively reduce execution risks and compete with strong business, technology, and operational value propositions.”

The key insights drawn from the report are:

– The majority of financial firms (67%) show a “repeatable” level of BDA maturity overall, the third level of IDC Financial Insights’ five-level BDA maturity model. 12% of financial services firms fall one maturity level below and another 21% are one maturity level above the majority.

– Institutions investing in their BDA competencies report a positive correlation between BDA maturity and the successful outcomes of BDA initiatives. On average, higher levels of BDA maturity lead to better chances of generating value and achieving expected or greater-than-expected benefits.

The report presents benchmark data on the maturity of BDA capabilities of North American commercial, retail and investment banks; identifies the key capabilities that distinguish institutions whose BDA efforts have met or exceeded their overall expectations from their competitors whose BDA efforts have fallen short; and offers guidance for achieving BDA success.